Huskies Come Out Hot, Build Big Lead, Lose Badly to Nebraska

The University of Washington basketball team came out shooting like these guys were at the Puyallup Fair, armed with a popgun in their hands, taking dead aim, determined to win a whole bunch of stuffed animals.

For a half on Wednesday night at Alaska Airlines Arena, the Huskies suddenly began connecting like Steph Curry, hitting nearly everything from the outer reaches -- 9 of their first 12 3-pointers, in fact -- to twice build a 13-point, first-half lead over Nebraska in front of a two-thirds full arena.

However, sometimes those who live by the 3-pointer, die by it, and that's went happened to Danny Sprinkle's team as it went ice cold in the second half and lost to the visiting Cornhuskers, tailing off badly for a 86-72 defeat.

"Obviously a tale of two halves," Sprinkle said.

No teddy bears, no prizes whatsoever, nothing, for this club as it squandered an opportunity to do something really meaningful on this night: a win for the Huskies (11-11 overall, 2-9 Big Ten) would have enabled them to climb out of the conference cellar for the first time in nearly three weeks by leap-frogging an idle Penn State (13-10, 3-9).

Yet after their hot start, all these guys shot were blanks, missing 12 of their last 13 behind the line to give back their big lead and more to the Cornhuskers (15-8, 5-7).

Mekhi Mason hits one of his three first-half 3-pointers. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Drawing a starting assignment as the Huskies continue to shuffle their guards, Rice transfer Mekhi Mason was the instigator, the guy with the hottest hand early, scoring 16 of his team-high 23 points in the first half, with 9 of them coming from behind the line.

For that matter, everyone got into the act behind the line over the game's first 14 and a half minutes. Mason dropped in 3 of 3, Tyler Harris sank 3 of 4 and Great Osobor, Wilhelm Breidenbach and DJ Davis connected for one each as the UW settled on a 47-37 advantage at the break.

"When we're hitting shots, everything goes well." Mason said. "We got hit and we didn't hit back."

While the Huskies made this long-range shooting look easy, early on, winning the game in that manner would not be the case.

They were outscored 15-2 to open the second half and fell behind for the first time since the opening minutes, staring up at a 52-49 deficit when the Cornhuskers' Brice Williams drained, what else, a 3-pointer from the left side at the 15-minute mark of the second half. Williams topped his team in scoring with 23 points, as well

The Huskies led for the last time at 57-56 when Mason drained a 3-pointer from the right side with 11:27 left to play. That was it for the home team.

Great Osobor gets inside for a lay-in against Nebraska. | Skylar Lin Visuals

"They really amped it up in the second half," Mason said, "and too us off the line."

The Huskies now take three days off and try to find their touch before facing Northwestern (13-10, 4-8) on Saturday night with a 7:30 p.m. tipoff.

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